She Never Said
by elfe136
Summary: She was the love of my life. She passed away seven years ago. Today, I need to tell my son why he has no mother.


"Tell me about mom", little Alex says.

He's eight years old today, my son. It hasn't been easy, not for him, living without a mother most of his life, and certainly not for me.

Not that I'd ever imagined life with Nat would be easy. The two of us, we were the definition of complicated. When Nat told me she was pregnant, I didn't know what to do. I thought, _Oh God, the poor child_. I still feel that way. Alex could have had a better life in a normal family. Instead, he has me.

"Do I have to?", I ask Alex with a soft sigh. I know the answer already.

"You promised, Dad."

And he's right, I did. I thought I would be ready by now. I'm not. I've never been further from ready than now, on the night after his eighth birthday, after watching him play with his few friends from school and Uncle Tony and Uncle Steve and Uncle Thor. After being reminded, again and again, how much like his mom he really is.

His name is Alexander. Alexander Romanov. Of course he has Nat's last hame. We didn't even discuss it. He was hers, she had made him, I didn't really help a lot except supply the genetic material. I still remember how hard being pregnant was for Nat, especially in the last few months. She had to stop fighting, she couldn't rely on her body anymore. After Alex was born, she trained for hours every day to get back into shape.

I suppose after he was born, he was mine a lot more than hers; she's never really been fond of kids and I was slightly more ready to give up my profession to look after my child.

And of course, ever since _then_, he's been wholly and completely mine, and I wish so much he wasn't.

Every day, at least for a few minutes, I wish she was still here to see him.

"Your mom was brilliant, Sasha", I say softly. "I miss her every day."

I don't often call him Sasha. It was Nat's nickname for him; I only use it if I've thought about her too much. Alex knows he has to be careful when that happens - only too often, I'll convert my sorrow to anger and then, nobody's safe. I've almost attacked my own son a few times and I'm not proud of it. It's not his fault. None of it is.

"She died when you were young", I say. "You were barely a year old." Seven years. Seven damned years have passed since she died. Seven years since I last saw her face.

"I've told you that before", I continue. Alex snuggles against me and I put my arm around him absent mindedly.

"But I've never told you why she died, and how."

"You said you would when I was eight", Alex says in a small voice.

Because eight is the age at which Nat had her first real job as a spy. Ever since Nat told me that, eight has been this fixed number in my head; the age at which children are old enough to learn important things about their lives and the world.

And I know I'm going to tell Alex about Nat, right now, and it's going to cost me sweat and blood and tears as well as the composure I manage to keep in every situation - every situation other than this one.

"Well, you know that I work for S.H.I.E.L.D., right? And you know what I do there."

Alex nods and looks up at me. "You help defend the world against bad people."

I smile vaguely. That's one way of looking at it.

"And your mom, she worked at S.H.I.E.L.D. too." He knows that, of course. Otherwise it would be hard to explain why Uncle Tony and Uncle Steve and the rest of the Avengers know so much about Nat. They talk about her - well, not all the time, but she is mentioned fairly often. Every single one of the team, including Nick Fury, admires her a great deal; Tony has said more than once that he considers her the strongest of the Avengers. (Or, well, Tony being Tony, he never actually said it, but it was implied. Strongly. More than once.)

"We met through S.H.I.E.L.D. and we worked together on a few occasions. I think I was in love with her from the first time I saw her. I never mentioned it to her, or tried to pursue her in any way, because I knew she didn't want that. Or so I thought. Have I ever told you about the time when Loki attacked Earth?"

"You mean Uncle Thor's brother?"

"The very same", I say. I honestly can't remember if I ever told him or not. If not, then now was a good time to start.

"Thor talks about him a lot", Alex says quietly. "He says he misses him and he feels sorry for him. Uncle Thor says Loki wasn't always evil and he says it's his fault that Loki turned bad."

I know that Loki is kind of Thor's weakest spot but I just can't forgive Loki for what he did to me. And the last thing I want Thor to do is make my son pity the man who brainwashed me and almost made me kill Nat; who would have let me torture and kill her without batting an eyelash. Of the things I did and could have done, that is the worst; it's a lot worse than conspiring to kill people in Germany or giving away S.H.I.E.L.D.'s secrets to the enemy. Nothing and nobody was ever more important than Nat.

Except possibly Alex.

"Thor knows more about Loki than any of us", I say heavily. "But just because he wasn't evil as a child doesn't mean we can forgive him easily now. I certainly can't. You'll have to form your own opinion about things like that, but don't judge until you know all the facts, son."

He looks up at me with large eyes. "I'll remember that, Dad."

"Good."

"What did Loki do, though, when he came to Earth?", Alex asks. He's getting slightly fidgety; he's not sure why this is important to how his mother died. He'll understand soon enough.

"He came for the Tesseract, which is basically an energy source which can open gateways in the universe... it's complicated, but Loki wanted it, so he stole it. And he had this staff, which he used to brainwash people and turn them over to his side in a heartbeat." I can still remember the very second the tip of his scepter touched my heart. I felt cold, and then I was in pain for a moment and then, when the pain went away, I was simply numb. I couldn't feel anything. I was totally disconnected from my body. I could still see out of my eyes and hear with my ears, but I could no longer control what my mouth was saying or where my legs were going or who my bow was shooting at. He controlled even my thoughts so I couldn't resist against this form of mental imprisonment. There was nothing at all I could do - I regained my ability to think and control my own body the moment Nat fought me and banged my head on the railing. I still remember seeing her and thinking I would kill her and trying harder than ever to get out of Loki's prison -

"He turned you, didn't he?", Alex asks. "I head Uncle Steve mention it once. I don't think he knew I was listening, he wouldn't say things like that when I'm around."

I nod thoughtfully. "Yes. Yes, he did. It was horrible. I almost killed your mom. It was before we were together. She managed to overwhelm me, she literally knocked some sense into me, and after that we talked for a long time. I think that's when everything started, because she - well, she came as close as your mother ever could to saying she was in love with me."

I remember the exact words. _I've been compromised._ And I remember her telling me what Loki told her. Of course, she was acting at the time, but that doesn't mean it didn't hit home; in that moment, I could tell that it did.

_I've been compromised._

"Loki invaded Earth shortly after that with an army of aliens called the Chitauri", I continued my tale. "To make a long story short, we won, Loki was imprisoned and sent back to Asgard, and Nat and I were left to work this thing out."

Nat never thought love was something for her, and she was frightened of what it would mean, so I gave her space and told her that whatever she decided, I would be fine with it.

"We both had really dangerous jobs and we couldn't really afford to care too much about each other. I'm not sure you understand that right now, Sasha. But you will one day. Anyway, your mother and I agreed on an open relationship, which meant less commitment and more alternatives and we were both perfectly fine with that. That is, at least, until Nat got pregnant."

"With me", Alex says. He knows how babies happen; he's known that from a pretty early age because I've never deemed it necessary to sell him the stork crap.

"Yes, with you. She had to give up her job for a while and it was really hard on her. She was a fighter, Nat was, and just sitting around waiting for her baby to pop outside was just not for her. Boy, she was moody. I don't know how I even put up with her, but I did, gladly. And when you were born, I cared for you so she could do her job again."

I take a deep breath because the hardest part of the story is about to come. I don't want to tell it. I don't want to relive Nat's death. But I know I have to. Alex has a right to know.

"You weren't married, were you? You and mom." It's one of those questions that Alex has asked once or twice before, but sometimes asks again, just to make sure.

"No, we were never married. I don't think we ever would have been. It wasn't her thing, at all. And probably not mine, either. We just - we had our own thing and no saying of vows or exchanging of rings would have meant any more to us."

Because I know it's true. Especially towards the end of her pregnancy, Nat and I were closer than ever before, to the point of not being able to imagine life without each other. I know she expected life to go on as it did before after Alex's birth, but I also know that she didn't mind spending more time with me when it turned out she couldn't simply go back to the way everything was before. She certainly minded a lot less than she would have before. We got so much time, so many precious moments together. Yet it was all too short, cut off brutally by Loki's second attack.

"Loki attacked again after a while. I don't really know how it happened. Thor can tell you that better than me. But he escaped, and he invaded Earth again. The Avengers were called again. You were only a year old and we had to leave you behind – we left you with Pepper because neither of us could miss the fight, and then we went to fight the worst battle of our lives.

"Most of us were critically injured. Steve couldn't walk for a while and had to use a wheelchair. We would have made jokes about that. I know Tony made a few jokes, but none of the others did."

He looks at me. He knows I'm avoiding talking about Nat. I'm very aware of that as well. It's something I don't want to discuss, because even seven years later, I still haven't really come to terms with her death. I still set the table for three occasionally. I still expect her to come home almost every day. I reach for her at night and am cruelly shaken awake when I remember that I will never feel her soft skin on mine again.

Alex doesn't say anything. He doesn't have to.

"She was there, in the battle", I continue softly. I can feel the tears dangerously close to the surface. "Of course she was, where else would she be? She'd just finished training after her pregnancy, she was exactly like she was before. Maybe not completely. I think she was more reckless than usual, and still a little out of practice."

I still blame myself. I should have seen it, I should have protected her more and I should have seen it. I could have saved her. In my dreams and in my nightmares, I could have saved her.

The dreams are the same as the nightmares. The dreams turn into nightmares the moment I wake up and find that she isn't there anymore. And they never stop.

"She wasn't the only one who died. Others died, good people, friends. But nobody was as important as her."

And I didn't want to believe it. She was Natasha Romanov, the Black Widow. She was indestructible. She was so, so important; she couldn't just die.

I didn't want to believe it, even when I knelt in the dust after the fighting had ceased and held her lifeless body in my arms. I wanted her to wake up, to open her eyes and jump up and be horrified that she missed the fighting. I wanted her to shout at me and I wanted her to wake up and fight me and kill me – if only she would wake up.

_Wake up, Nat. Please, wake up_.

I can't hold back the tears anymore.

"I don't know how it happened, I was somewhere else", I say heavily. Sasha is closer now. He's never seen his dad cry. But I've always known it would happen. On this very day, because I can't think about Nat and not cry. Especially when I remember the day she died.

"It must have been quick. She was already out when Tony found her. We never found exactly what happened – it was such a horrible battle, we lost track of things, couldn't keep tabs on each other."

I sigh. My arm is around Sasha and tears are falling into his red hair as he reaches out to grab a tissue from the nightstand. I take it, but I don't wipe at my tears. Instead, I just crumple the tissue in my hand and squeeze the little cotton ball tightly. It doesn't help, but neither would wiping away the tears. These are tears that have to be cried.

"Tony didn't tell us, the others, until the battle was over. I think Steve saw her before that as well, and possibly Thor, but I didn't. I just remember calling for her on the Comm and she didn't answer. She didn't answer, that was the worst moment in my life, even worse than finding out what was going on, because there was just this silence. I kept calling and calling, but nobody else joined in."

_Nat. Nat, answer me. ... Nat, this is Clint, do you copy? ... Natasha. - Nat. This is Hawkeye, Nat. ... Nat. Please._

"And then Tony said and you know how Tony always sounds like he's joking and how he never sounds serious. But he did sound serious, more serious than I've ever heard him, and he said over the Comm, _Clint, come down here_."

I can't really remember what was actually the worst, the silence or Tony's voice. Tony, who was never serious, being dead serious. I was scared to death by that voice. I didn't even recognise it at first. I thought, who is that? And then I thought, that was Tony, wasn't it? And then I just ran, I've never run faster in my life, and I hated the fact that I couldn't just fly like Iron Man or Thor or just jump off the building and come down unscratched like the Hulk. I had to run down the staircase of this tall building I was standing on, and some of it was in ruins.

Objectively, it couldn't have taken me more than a few minutes.

It seemed like an eternity to me, though.

"So I went down there." It's easy to tell at this point that it's getting harder for me to speak. Sasha knows it too. He looks up at me. He knows daddy loved mom very much. I tell him almost every day how much I miss her, how much he's like her, and how utterly perfect she was for me.

"It took a while to find them. The others were already there, even the Hulk, I was the last to come. And she was lying on the ground and I thought, she's been hit. I thought she was injured, I could see that Steve was injured and Tony and Thor weren't looking too good either, so I thought she was hurt. I didn't – I didn't realise."

I take a deep breath. It's harder than I thought. I never thought it would be easy, but I didn't anticipate this. Tears are falling thick and fast; I haven't cried this much since... well, I haven't cried this much for a long time.

I clutch to the tissue like my life depends on it, but still won't use it. I can see that it's affecting Sasha as well, even though he has never seen death. He knows how much I loved her and he can see how much it hurts to tell him now. He doesn't ask me to stop, but I know he wouldn't ask me to continue if I stopped now.

"I looked at Tony, he still had his helmet on, so I couldn't see his face. Steve and Thor weren't looking at me. I think that's when I started to realise. She wasn't just hurt. I stepped closer, she wasn't moving, her eyes were closed and I could – I could see her wounds."

I'm not going into details here. I never said I would. Remembering her is bad enough. I've been an assassin for a long time and I swear, I have never seen more blood. Or blood that was redder on the pavement of the city. The gruesome wound didn't really leave any doubt.

"I started talking. I said her name, I told her to wake up, I begged her to open her eyes. I didn't want to realise she was dead, I wanted her to wake up. I shook her and didn't look at her wounds and the blood. She didn't open her eyes. She never opened her eyes again."

Sasha is crying. His hand is clutching my shirt and he is sobbing quietly into my side.

I think, _that's enough_.

There are more things I could tell him, but I won't. Not now. Maybe not ever. But he's bound to ask and when he asks I will give him the answer he deserves.

But not now.

The story is finished, and so are we. Both of us relying on each other's support, the grown man mourning the love of his life and the child who never knew his mother.

I don't tell him how I finally looked at the gaping wound in Nat's chest. How I tried to stop the bleeding even though it no longer bled. How I thought that my inexperienced hands working on the wounds would have triggered enough pain for her to wake up.

I don't tell him of the moment I realised that she was dead and I don't tell him how I started crying, much like I am crying now. I don't tell him that I didn't notice the others leaving, I only noticed that I was alone after a while. I don't tell him of the hours I knelt in the street, with the ruins of the city around me, holding Nat's lifeless body to mine, trying every now and then to feel for a heartbeat that would never come.

I don't tell him how I talked to her, how I said everything I never told her when she was alive. I told her I loved her and I needed her, and I told her that Sasha needed her and that she couldn't just leave us. I begged her to stay. I told her, over and over, to wake up, to please open her eyes.

Seven years since she died and I still haven't accepted it. I still keep telling her to come back to me, to wake up, please, Nat. In my dreams, she is still there and I can save her.

Seven years I've been wondering if I could have saved her. I've been wondering if I could have seen what was happening. I've been wondering if I would sleep better if I knew how she died, exactly, and when, and if she killed the one who did it.

Seven years I've been wondering if she regretted being alone when she died. If she would have wanted me to be there. I've been wondering if there were any things that she would have told me if I had been with her in her last moments.

But Nat has taken all this knowledge to the next world, along with all the things she never said.


End file.
